Petoskey's Learn Great Foods features fun foodie forays

If fresh air and fresh food are your passions, then Ann Dougherty's Learn Great Foods tours and retreats are your ticket, and all of Northwest Michigan is the stage.

On July 21, for instance, there's the Leelanau Peninsula Foodie Tour that begins at Sweeter Song, a Community Supported Agriculture organic farm. Your day includes two food stops -- perhaps Leland's Carlson Fisheries and Village Cheese Shanty, maybe a cherry orchard, winery, beef farm or chocolate maker -- and a hands-on cooking class and dinner follow. In Traverse City on August 1, you can sign up for the three-hour Biscotti and Vodka Tour with lunch for $50. Daylong tours are $105, weekend culinary retreats are $225 and farmers market tours are $50. You can also customize tours from Petoskey.

In its sixth season, Learn Great Foods keeps growing. Dougherty now works with 10 chefs, five tour guides, and more than 60 farms and gourmet shops around the Midwest. She also has produced 10 FoodBook titles -- booklets that feature produce, bison and fish, with recipes, storage, growing info, health benefits and buying tips, and 15 others are in the works, available for $2.45 each at local farmers markets and in bulk through Dougherty's website. In 2008, Learn Great Foods won Michigan's Best Innovative Business Idea from Michigan State University's Product Center for Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources.

Writer: Patty LaNoue Stearns
Source: Ann Dougherty